Step 3: Networking and Talking to People
Extended
Who Should I Talk To?
From your existing search information, you should have a growing list of questions. The key at this stage is to identify interview candidates with the expertise and experience to answer these questions.
The most obvious place to start is with your design team. Your list of who to interview will evolve as you do more interviews, since a key question you’ll ask in each conversation is for an introduction to additional candidates for a future interview. In this regard, interviews and the intentional curiosity that drive them are a life-long project. Each conversation must trigger two key outcomes: more questions to ask and more candidates to ask them to. Therefore, the “who” is like an avalanche that picks up speed and keeps growing.
When you’ve refined your list of interview candidates, it’s imperative you explore their background prior to interviewing them. A lot of people use information interviews to get answers to questions they could have found online. That is a waste of time and energy for both sides. Instead, you’ll spend your interview time digging into the more interesting areas of their life and career. This will make the interview more engaging and valuable for both sides. People like people who are interested in them, so do some basic research that shows evidence of your genuine interest. LinkedIn, blogs, and Twitter are logical places to start to answer some of the basic questions that follow.
How Do I book an interview?
The first rule of an informational interview is respect. In most cases, you’ll be the lowest priority in their email inbox or voicemail list. To cut through this clutter you should consider the following:
Connect through a mutual contact. For example, “Wendy Smith suggested I contact you because of your expertise in…”
Make it personal. Demonstrate you know something about them through your digging. For example, “I see you also studied accounting at the University of…”
Be clear on your ask. For example, “I am considering a career in X and would like to have 30 minutes of your time to ask you about how you progressed in your career.” This does two things; it puts a clear constraint on the request (30 minutes), and it reinforces that the interview is about them (not you).
Be persistent and keep asking. As you’re the lowest priority thing in their inbox you’ll likely have to send a couple of reminders. Be polite and persistent and if they say no, ask them for anyone else that they could suggest. This will ensure you’ll have a return on your effort.
Make it easy for them. Offer to work to their schedule and meet them at their office or anywhere they’d like to meet. This interview is for you—not them. Don’t be surprised if the interview is a month or more out. Professionals are busy people!
What Should we talk about?
Each candidate brings expertise to a conversation, so it’s important that you focus each conversation individually.
Everyone you’ll have conversations with will have one thing in common; their time is at a premium. Since you’re the one who asked for the interview, you’re in control and need to ensure it’s focused.
One useful approach to determine what you’re trying to learn from these interviews is to identify the assumptions you’re making about the field, industry, or job, and then use the interviews to test these assumptions. For example, your earlier work may have uncovered architecture as a possible career path based on your interest and skill in art. To dig deeper into architecture, you would list a set of assumptions and how you might validate them. For example:
The modest goal of many early-stage interviews is to learn more about an industry, position, or person (e.g., what types of jobs are available to biology graduates and do they sound interesting). You can’t immediately come up with a well-articulated value proposition. You’ll have to start several layers away, peeling back more about the areas that you love, the jobs and problems that exist, and the future of the industry. As you peel back a layer with each round of interviews, you’ll expand your and put yourself in a position to develop a series of deeper questions for the next round of interviews.
Below are some questions to answer using existing information about your interviewee before you go on the interview. For an extended list click HERE.
Education
What is their level of schooling?
What was their major, if any?
What school(s) did they go to?
Career trajectory
What was their first position after school?
What companies have they worked at?
What roles have they held?
What company do they work for (or run) now?
How has their company performed? What news releases have they published?
What are some of the major trends in their industry?
Personal
Where have they lived?
What interests do they have outside of work?
What volunteer or charitable activities are they engaged in?
What is their family status (e.g., married, children etc.)?
Click the button below for an extended list of Question Thought Starters.
How do I run an interview?
As part of the preparation for each interview, develop a discussion guide that includes the background information you learned about the interviewee and some questions to start off the interview. Remember that this is a guide, not a script, checklist, or questionnaire. You want to facilitate a discussion more than conduct an interrogation. To ensure both you and the interviewee get maximum value from this process, we recommend you consider the following both in developing your discussion guide questions and conducting the interview:
Build rapport: People like to know you’ve taken an interest in them, so do your homework. Are they alumni of your school? What do you have in common with them? Do they like sports? Building rapport is about building a minimum-level of trust and empathy to facilitate a much deeper conversation. Enthusiasm can go a long way toward showing someone that you care and are interested in what they have to say.
Keep it simple (but focused): The KISS rule (keep it simple, stupid) may be easy to say, but it’s difficult to do. You’ll want to talk about a lot of things, but interviews should be organic. To get the most from your interview, note these suggestions:
Start with general questions and then move into more specific questions later. For example, you may want to ask them what made them decide to become a _____________.
Start with topics that the interviewee would find familiar. Most people like to show others how smart they are, so let your interviewee talk about his/her expertise.
Start with open-ended questions and only use close-ended questions if required. The risk of a close-ended question is getting a simple yes or no response with minimal value. Your goal is to stimulate your interviewee’s engagement and keep him/her talking.
Don’t stray from the goal of the discussion. Given time constraints, it may lead to spending 25 minutes talking about baseball or their time at college and five minutes on the actual subject of the interview.
Listen. Listen. Listen. Great interviews build on what your interviewee says, which is impossible if you aren’t listening. So, absorb what they say. If you do, your interviewee will sense you are engaged, and the interview will be much more rewarding for both of you.
Keep probing: Probing is intentional curiosity in real-time. When you respond to a comment by asking them a more specific question, you’re probing. For example, if an interviewee tells you that the best decision they ever made was to do a co-op degree, don’t just leave it at that. Ask them, “Why was the co-op so important to you?” Then you may ask about their specific co-op experience and the competencies they developed.
Record the interview (with approval): Every smartphone has a digital recording capability. Recording every interview provides you the ability to go back and listen to the interview to catch any nuggets of gold. If you’re not recording an interview, you’ll have to take notes which stifles the natural conversation. Remember to always ask your interviewee for approval in advance and put the recording device on the table so it’s transparent.
Be respectful: You aren’t only interviewing someone; you’re also building your personal brand and network. This professional has given you their valuable time. If you find that the interview is naturally going longer, ask if they’d be able to extend the interview by a specific amount of time. If they have time and are enjoying the discussion, they’ll almost certainly say yes.
Invest in the future: Ideally, this interview is not simply a one-off. Following the interview, ensure you send a note thanking the interviewee for their time. Personalizing the note by identifying some key themes they highlighted demonstrates your engagement and reinforces the value of the time they spent with you. In your note, ask if they’d be open to keeping in touch so you can get in touch with any additional questions.
Consolidating your interviews
Within 24 hours of each interview, sit down with the recording and make notes in your journal. The goal of the notes is to identify major themes that emerged from the interview. A 30-minute conversation can cover a variety of topics, but some topics or themes float to the top. these key themes for each interview. Each theme is interesting unto itself, but it’s the merger of these themes that transform them from merely interesting to the evidence you’re looking for to define the Professional YOU.
This interview process is dynamic, and each interview should be treated as a building block. Each interview will raise new themes or questions that you’ll want to explore and test in future interviews. It’s important to consider the rule of three: If a theme or issue emerges from three credible sources, then you can have confidence there’s a factual basis to it. This theme or issue should then move from the “interesting pile” to the “evidence pile.” The evidence pile is what you’ll use to start refining the Professional YOU.
Consider this only a start
Ideally, this interview is not simply a one-off. A core objective of this process is for you to build your professional network and identify mentoring candidates.
Click the button below to go back to Activity 4.1 - Principle of Triangulation.
